Benefits to Gas guns over AEG?
 

So, I always see people discussing the negatives of gas guns when AEG equivalents are available. And, to be fair, I can understand them. More maintenance, expensive to fix and easier to break, fluctuating FPS, dirty propane smell, et cetera... However, I've never once seen someone talk about the benefits of gas guns. What are they? Why would YOU use a gas gun over an AEG? I'm curious.

If we're talking just about the +:

No damn gear shimming
No stripping pistons
Less possibility to have an air leak compared to the more complex gearbox mechanics
Much more fun to shoot
Realcap (debatable +; It's a plus for me at least)
Much easier to fieldstrip and get to the guts when the need arise
If a problem happen, it is often much faster and easier to fix
...

Drake?

I was just about to quote your signature lol

the fps doesn't drop as quickly when you use heavier bb's ( i mean initial fps)

I did not know this! so gas guns generally use heavier BB's then?

they can.

the general consensus is that GBBRs are not for first time players

GBBRs are a little more pricey, and sometimes parts are harder to find.

Heh! reminds me of my buddy. He was absolutely adamant about using a gas gun, thinking they were the shit. Then on our first day out at the whitby field, he got his ass kicked by all the AEG's!

since then, he sold his gas gun and switched to electric...

Realism

Gas guns look, sound, and function much more than the real thing. In many cases, real steel parts can be used on a GBBR. AEGs are way too fussy, and they sound like sewing machines made for little girls. :rolleyes:

I LOL at that

Every time I hear an AEG go off, 'merrzip' is going to flash through my mind...

If you play with a group who's motto is "Hosing is the dance of my people" they may not be the best choice.

If you're broke and need to borrow 75 cents to buy BBs before a game they may not be the best choice.

If you're a bit seasoned and it bugs you when you have a battery wire break on the field as you unpack and as you discover the wire had been disconnected and the battery didn't take a charge so soldering won't save your day and then you proceed to have the connectors fall of your motor and the when you get that on you strip a pinion gear and so on you might be ready for gas. Or when four people you're playing with drop out because each has one of those failures on their AEG.

All the key parts on a gas gun can be fixed or swapped on the field. The most common point of failure is the magazines so with spares of those when one goes down keep you in the action.

You can tune a GBBR to be as accurate and far reaching as an AEG. You do loose out on the opportunity dump a 500 round high cap on someone but since most of the seasoned players will have moved past that style of play it's no great loss.

Shimming and other AEG mechanics aren't a problem in and by themselves when you know how to do it (albeit tedious on lower quality mechboxes), but a major downside is the difficulty/effort of getting to the mechbox in the first place: if its relatively simple on some guns, other require disassembling the entire gun just to get to the mechbox. On M4s and other V2 gearboxes, you can't test the mechbox without reassembling the whole gun (or a lot of it) either. Just to disassemble it again if you need to change something.

GBBRs are mechanically simple: there's only a small handful of moving parts. For my WE M4s, for example, I carry an extra spare bolt carrier group and a spare complete trigger box. They can be changed in a matter of minutes (seconds, for the spare bolt carrier) and that will fix most problems that could occur on the field. The only other thing would be a leaky mag (you're down one mag), otherwise someone needs to run over your gun with a car or something.

GBBRs will operate reliably in wet and extreme wet conditions: in fact you could leave them underwater for a while and they'd work fine. Obviously you don't want to fire an AEG while its waterlogged, you don't want to get a MOSFET or other controller circuits wet (e.g., PTWs etc) and you don't want to risk shorting a battery, specially a LiPO.

You also don't need to deal with wiring and battery-carrying issues. If you do a lot of custom work, specially if you want to create a small compact package, this is an important consideration. Wiring always tends to be problematic, too: how many times have I see, on game mornings, people with battery and/or wiring gun problems? Its happened to me on a few occasions, too. Wires get accidentally yanked, they break their solders, connector snap, wires get pinched, etc.

With an NPAS you can easily adjust your FPS, removing the necessity of having a separate "indoor" and "outdoor" gun. Yes, there are some mechboxes with quick swap springs, etc. but its not all AEGs, and it'll often force you to go into a certain platform (PTW, WE's Katana, etc) or buy an expensive mechbox. NPAS for WE is $20.

But for me, really, its a combination of all those little factors:

Someone could call me right this second and tell me we're going to play, Ijust have to grab my gear, mags, gun, BB and gas and I'm out the door. Compare this to years of Night-Before-Gameday spent charging a battery, a spare battery, test firing the gun to make sure the batteries are okay, checking the FPS to make sure the gun is okay, packing a spare gun (cuz if something happens to your main AEG, you may not be able to fix it on the field: occurrences of that happening are legendary), charging batteries for the spare gun, testing the spare gun. It's like 2AM by now, I have to get up at 5 and drive 2 hrs to get to the field, FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUU.

Properly tuned, GBB FPS won't always fluctuate that much. I find the accuracy quite good, better than a lot of AEGs I've used (AEG FPS can fluctuate too). They accept a lot of RS parts and the balance more realistic (ie., no heavy battery on one end). The trigger response is obviously lightning fast and you can double tap like the real thing. A proficient shoot will experience a clear edge over most AEGs: I can get two shots off in the time it takes a lot of AEGs to get their first shot fired. Only highly tuned guns, PTWs etc can compete at the same level.

And obviously it's fun as fuck to shoot. Completely new experience that breathed a second life into airsoft for me.

I like the trigger response of a GBBR in CQB settings.. Some people I see playing with stock AEGs and shitty batteries seem to have a huge delay between when they pull the trigger and when the bb actually makes its way out of the gun. In CQB that delay can cost you a kill..

I've had less problems with my AEG then with the guys who use GBBR in the team.

Main recurring problems with GBBR comes from leaky mags so having an extra or 2 is good but costs more but fixing leaky mags is easy when you have the parts like said before me.

The only thing I find annoying safety-wise about GBBR is temperature fluctuations that affect them.

In the summer it's not all that different but a day that the temperature goes from low to high in a short period like it's happened, the GBBR may go out of FPS specs and you'll have to pass it through the chrony again and re-ajust it with your NPAS.

On the other hand, I've found them to be really easy to repair and/or upgrade compared to AEG gearboxes. For me, it's still easy but GBBR were less hassle.

For a new guy, buying an AEG first and upgrading later on to GBBR is the best option.

The only ones I recommend buying GBBR from the start is someone getting into the sport with veterans already using GBBR and bother buying the same ones as them first to get your experience done before trying to go for new ones.

We all end up getting something else at some point so there is no point in getting that exotic thing from the start. It just may crap your fun before you get into it because you end up not playing because of crappy performance and I say this because it's happened to 2 people in my team early on.

I've found that having both an AEG and GBBR is the best solution.

This said, it all boils down to one thing : GBBR really is more fun to use then AEG's and there is no denying that as this quote testifys :

Good point, forgot to mention that one.